


All Seas Lead Me Back To You

by strangeallure



Series: It's the Great Mushroom, Charlie Brown [5]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Halloween Challenge, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, M/M, Science, ghost ship - Freeform, mycelial shenanigans, scary stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-28 23:26:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16732650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangeallure/pseuds/strangeallure
Summary: Canon-divergent from the end of 1x13 "What's Past Is Prologue".Paul finally finds himself home on Discovery, back in their own universe. Something, however, is very wrong with the ship and her crew.





	All Seas Lead Me Back To You

**Author's Note:**

> **Series premise** : Paul and the Discovery crew are trapped inside a mycelial network still battling the effects of Terran contamination. They try to ride out the infection, waiting for the network to heal itself. Meanwhile, they are thrown into ever-changing situations they can only survive by working together. Stories stand alone, but tie into a larger arc.
> 
> The last fic based on Halloween prompts I found on tumblr. (Yes, I do realize it's past Thanksgiving. Sorry.)
> 
> Thank you, frangipani, for nagging, encouragement and feedback.

Pain. So much pain.

It shoots through him, through every nerve, every neural pathway. The sheer force of it sends jolts of electricity through his system, seems to create new pathways, new release valves for all that pressure pushing outward.

Paul seizes, his body a clenching fist, a coil of energy.

And then he relaxes.

He falls onto the floor, hyper-aware of his own physicality. The throbbing in his temples, the metallic taste in his mouth, the roiling in his stomach and ache deep in his bones.

He pushes himself off the floor, using the navigator harness to steady himself.

It hits him: the navigator harness. The spore lab, the spore drive. Discovery. He’s back right where he started.

Paul reaches within himself. There’s nothing but awareness of his own body: the way his chest heaves and his blood beats against his eardrums, how his skin feels clammy, tacky with drying sweat.

No mycelial sixth sense, no external intuition telling him what to do, no invisible hand steering him in a certain direction. It could be another scenario, but it _feels_ different. His perceptions, his thoughts now have an edge, are more real, somehow.

Paul didn’t notice at the time, but inside the network, there was this underlying sense of … connection, maybe. A link to something bigger than himself, a guiding force.

Now, he’s reduced, cut off. Free.

He’s exhilarated, too, and terrified. He’s … hopeful.

Is this it? Are they home?

He looks around. The mycelial cloud inside the navigation chamber must have dissipated already since there’s no spore-drenched fog around him, no glow and sparkle.

He activates the door and it slides open to reveal the wider lab outside the chamber. The room is dark. Maybe dimming protocols for spore activation are still engaged. No, it’s darker than it’s supposed to be during a jump, illumination coming only from consoles, displays and emergency floor lights.

But hey, they rode the edge of a mycelial shockwave into another universe. If all that’s damaged is the ambient light system, they’re more than lucky.

“Tilly!” he cries, relieved to see a familiar face. She’s at her work station, as she would be right after a jump, her chin tilted down, intend on the data before her. It’s odd that she’s not looking up at him. She should have heard the door slide open, she must have heard him calling her name. “I mean, Sylvia,” he adds, his confusion mixing with annoyance.

She doesn’t react. Paul walks the few paces towards her console. Tilly’s still standing there: tension in her body, both hands on her station and face wrinkled in concentration, focused on the readings in front of her. She doesn’t move.

Something is wrong. Her eyes are not right, too bright in the gloom. Paul bends forward and finds that they’re no longer blue, but filmed over white. Just like his were when-

No.

This can’t be happening.

He reaches out to grab Tilly by both shoulders.

His hands go right through her.

_What is this?_

He tries again, more careful. There isn’t even a hint of resistance where he can see his fingers touch her uniform. He closes his hands and they just … disappear inside her body. What he sees is the hand-less stumps of his arms merging seamlessly into Tilly’s shoulders. What he feels doesn’t correspond to the image at all: it’s just his fingertips pressing against his palms, his heartbeat warm in his fists. Visual and sensory input at a complete disconnect; it’s unnerving. He pulls his hands towards himself and they reappear, unchanged. 

It’s almost like a hologram, but not quite. His hands don’t distort the image of Tilly like they would a holographic projection. There’s no flicker, no sign of interaction, as if they weren’t even on the same plane. Paul can see Tilly, but he can’t touch her.

Is this another test? Another scenario after all? 

He tries to hone in on that instinct inside himself, that pull towards something, a specific direction, a certain action, but he comes up empty. He’s still alone with his confusion, no clue what his next steps should be.

All he knows is that this isn’t right.

Scenario or not, he has to do something. Has to find out what’s happening.

Paul looks around. There are a few more crew members in the lab, and he tries touching each and every one of them. Nothing.

Next, he checks the bridge. Saru is there in the captain’s chair, still an unfamiliar sight.

Owosekun and Detmer are at the helm, more bridge personnel at their respective stations.

They all seem to be frozen in time, forever mid-motion, whatever they were in the process of doing perpetually postponed. He can’t touch any of them.

What are they? Apparitions? Echoes? Are they even real if he can’t touch them, can’t interact with any of them? Paul has to believe they’re real. He can’t be the only one here, the lone survivor on a ship full of ghosts.

It seems like a cruel joke. He’s finally outside the network, back on his ship, surrounded by his crew. Yet he’s more alone than ever. The thought is a heavy weight, adding to the fatigue that suffuses him. He’s so tired, drained. Used up. He doesn’t want to fight any more. Something inside him starts to crack, his self on the verge of losing integrity and coming apart.

 _No._ He has to keep it together. He owes it to his crew not to give up, to exhaust all options.

 _What is going on?_ He has no idea. There’s no uncanny feeling of where he should be going like there was in the network. He almost wishes this were a scenario, at least then he’d be given some clues as to what he’s supposed to do now.

But this is reality, so he only has himself to rely on. Except for-

“Computer. Status,” he says into the empty air.

“Please specify.” The voice of the ship’s computer is pleasant and calm as always. Paul heaves a sigh of relief. Someone, well, some _thing_ to talk to at least. She may not be the wittiest conversationalist, but she’ll do.

“Status of primary ship-wide systems, life support, power.”

“All systems normal. Life support within standard parameters. Running on auxiliary power.”

“Auxiliary power? Why?”

“Warp core disengaged. No other primary power source available.”

_What the hell?_

“Why is the warp core disengaged?”

“Information unavailable.”

“Was it destroyed?”

“Information unavailable.”

“Warp core status?”

“Information unavailable.” Paul’s hackles are rising.

“Do we still _have_ a warp core?” 

“Information un-“

“Unavailable, of course,” Paul says over the computerized voice. “You useless piece of junk.”

Paul wonders how much he can trust the computer’s assessment of the other systems when it doesn’t even know if they still _have_ a freaking warp core. Helpless anger knots in his stomach. 

Priorities, he reminds himself. What to do next?

“Computer. How many crew members are on board right now?”

“One crew member. Paul Stamets.”

Fan-freaking-tastic.

He looks at Saru, lifelike but unmoving, as if out of a fairy tale. His eyes filmed over, the same as all the other non-corporeal specters aboard this ship. It reminds him of his own mycelial coma, how helpless he was: no longer master of his own body, unable to see clearly through the white sheen over his eyes. Incapable of saving Hugh. He pushes the thoughts away. _Focus._

The power source, Paul realizes. That’s what he should concentrate on right now. Is the warp core still aboard Discovery? If yes, is it about to implode and incinerate him? Paul hurries towards engineering.

On his way, he sees no more crew members in the corridors, not a single person. Are they all gone, faded out of existence? He tamps down the thought and the burgeoning panic it brings. Discovery destroyed the energy core of the Emperor’s ship in a fucking alternate universe, then tried to ride the ensuing mycelial shockwave to get back home. An ‘all hands on deck’ situation if there ever was one.

The doors to engineering open and Paul’s logic is confirmed. His breath of relief seems too loud in the silent space. Everyone’s at their stations, working on consoles and displays. Paralyzed mid-motion, their filmed-over eyes eerily white. 

To Paul’s surprise, the warp core is where it’s always been, its bright energy field illuminating the space around it.

Stupid computer.

“Computer, warp core status.”

“Information unavailable.”

“But it’s right here,” Paul exclaims, his hands flinging out in a useless gesture of exasperation. The computer doesn’t so much as reply.

He walks closer to the core, past some of his ghostly colleagues.

What if the warp core is in the same space they are? What if Paul can see it, but, like with the crew, Discovery’s internal sensors can’t pick up on it?

His first impulse is to touch the core, but he pulls his hand back before he can complete the motion. If he’s wrong about this, the security field will throw him across the room. He doesn’t need aftershocks in his muscles and ringing in his ears on top of everything else.

His eyes scan the area. Why is there nothing to throw lying around here? Were none of these people working?

Finally, he finds a sonic driver in the recess of a side panel.

Without giving it too much thought, Paul throws it at the core, bracing himself for one hell of a reaction when the metal meets the security field.

Instead, there’s a metallic clank-clank on the other side of the warp core. Paul walks around it, and sure enough: the sonic driver must have gone straight through the core, hitting the wall behind it and falling to the ground. So he’s not just trapped on a ship with a ghost crew, he can’t trust his eyes when it comes to inanimate objects either.

Frustrated, he flings his hand against where his eyes tell him the warp core is. As before with Tilly, Saru and everyone else, his fingers disappear inside the illusion without him feeling anything, not so much as the slightest tingling of energy.

And then it hits him: energy. Of course.

The human body can be described as a thermodynamic system, consuming and generating energy, just like a warp core. What if that’s why the computer can’t register either with its sensors? What if the energy signatures are out of phase, and that’s why Paul can see what is, in essence, energy generators, but cannot interact with them?

The thought makes him giddy. Any object that’s out of phase can be re-phased, can be brought back. He only needs to figure out how.

But what about auxiliary power? And, come to think of it, what about himself?

An explanation takes shape in his mind. 

The emergency power relays would have been inactive when the other energy sources were phase-shifted because at that time, warp core and spore drive were active and working, no need to generate auxiliary power. If whatever happened was a surge, not an ongoing phenomenon, it would only affect systems live during its occurrence.

As to why Paul himself is still in this phase … He injected himself with Tardigrade DNA to be able to navigate the ship’s spore drive. No one knows what that did to him, to his body chemistry and physical self. Maybe it made him multi-phasic, maybe it made him immune, maybe his new cellular makeup acted as insulation, protecting him from what happened. Whatever it is, right now he’s the only person on this ship with any power, any agency. Everyone else seems trapped, not just on another plane, but in a specific moment. Stuck in time. 

It’s only a theory, but as far as Paul’s concerned, it’s a good one. If he encounters contradictory evidence, he can always revise, but right now, he’ll try and do anything to get his crew back.

“Computer, scan for anomalies.”

“Please specify.”

“Anything that’s different from the way it usually is.”

“Too many variables. Please specify.” 

Paul lets out an annoyed huff. “Are you sure you’re the fleet’s flagship AI interface?”

“Confirmed. The USS Discovery is equipped exclusively with Starfleet’s most advanced technologies.”

Literal to a fault.

“Computer, you monitor data on all kinds of relevant variables on this ship: air quality, radiation levels, et cetera. Right?”

“Confirmed. In order to ensure crew health and safety as well as optimum system performance, several thousand variables are continuously monitored.” Maybe Paul’s imagining it, but the computer sounds pretty smug about it.

“And you log all of those variables, right?”

“Confirmed. As per data management protocols, the information is logged and backed-up at predetermined intervals.”

“Okay, great. Computer, please compare all of these variables from before our last jump to now.”

“Data incomplete. Cannot fulfill request.”

“What? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Negative. Information is accurate.”

Paul rolls his eyes. Sometimes he wishes Starfleet would use Tellarite AI instead of their own milquetoast protocols. Sure, Tellarite computers regularly talk back and insult you, but at least they’re not this hopelessly literal. In his book, a little attitude trumps slow-witted politeness.

“What data is missing?”

“There is a-”

“Stop.” He’s not in the mood for listening to a detailed list of minutiae. “Actually, I’d rather see this for myself. Reroute available data to the workstation in front of me.”

He half expects the computer to ask that he specify the console, already crouching down to find the equipment ID, but instead, the console lights up and a hologram appears.

“Command executed.” The computer sounds self-satisfied.

Paul scans through the data, going back and forth with swipes of his hand. Much better. Voice interfaces are so overrated. Some things, you just have to see. The more complex, the more useless audio-only output is.

Within minutes, he has figured it out. The last complete monitoring report is dated right before they engaged the spore drive to get to Starbase 46, when Lorca rerouted them to the alternate universe. That was supposed to be Paul’s final jump. Getting the crew to safety, then going on vacation with Hugh. Maybe quitting Starfleet altogether, certainly quitting his position as navigator and spore drive interface. 

A wave of melancholy washes over him, making his eyes burn and his throat tight. Hugh and him settling down together, leaving the nomadic life aboard a spaceship behind. An alternate life, a better life. 

He can’t dwell on that now. He has work to do.

The moment they engaged the drive, data collection ceased, their time in the mirror universe a black hole in the ship’s files. No logs, no documentation.

Monitoring picks up again just about the time Paul woke up on this ghost ship, alone with the out-of-phase echoes of his crewmates.

That’s probably a good sign, he tells himself. If monitoring stopped in the alternate universe and picked up again when he came to in the navigation chamber, it’s further evidence that they’re back in their own reality, that they’re home. At least he is.

Now to get the crew back with him. He overlays the data from before the jump into the alternate universe with the current readouts, but there are too many variables, too many fluctuations for him to identify patterns or likely culprits.

He taps on the console. Whittle down the data. Make it mean something. Come on.

As far as most parameters are concerned, his body functions normally, he knows that. Paul glances up at one of his immovable colleagues.

When Hugh developed and implemented the spore drive interface for Paul’s arm, he did a barrage of tests to confirm that all reactions were within normal range. Even Paul’s allergies and slightly elevated blood pressure had remained unaffected. “At least you’re not immortal yet,” Hugh had sighed in that long-suffering tone that couldn’t completely hide his relief. His voice echoes in Paul’s mind, the words almost prophetic now.

No, Paul tells himself, he _isn’t_ immortal and the crew _isn’t_ dead. His jaw clenches. He’s in a different phase, that’s all. It’s just a question of bringing the crew back here with him.

“Computer, identify variables which, if outside of approved ranges, could poison or noticeably impact members of the human species, like temperature or nitrogen concentration.”

“Subset identified.”

“For the timestamps specified, are any of these variables outside of approved ranges?”

“Negative. All variables are within parameters. No emergency protocol deployment needed.”

It’s almost like the computer wants to remind him that it would indeed deploy emergency protocols if it had detected such a thing. Maybe it does have a tiny bit of pride programmed into it.

“Good. Discard subset data.” As Paul expected, the graphics interface is still much too cluttered. He swallows. “Compare remaining data from before and after the jump. Highlight deviations of,” he hesitates, “more than two percent.”

The graphics change, but there are way too many data points still.

“Computer, are plausibility parameters and/or standard ranges specified or available for all of these variables?”

“Criteria requested are available for most parameters.”

Paul pumps his fist without meaning to.

“Are any variables outside of these standard ranges or plausibility parameters?”

“No variables outside of standard ranges or plausibility parameters.”

“Fuck.” And here he thought he was finally making progress.

“Should remaining parameters be displayed?” the computer chirps.

“What remaining parameters?”

“Parameters without available standard ranges or plausibility parameters.”

Sneaky little punk. “Yes,” he shouts. Maybe an AI interface with attitude isn’t what he wants either. Careful what you wish for.

There they are: a manageable range of fifteen parameters. Paul combs through them quickly, dismissing the first few as irrelevant.

His heart stops. Mycelial saturation and mycelial load. He should have thought of that sooner. They’re some of the monitoring variables he implemented himself when they moved the spore lab onto Discovery.

And just as he hoped, they’re completely out of whack, to use scientific terminology.

“Computer. Display development of mycelial saturation and mycelial load over the last half-hour period. Map onto data from the half hour before the last time the spore drive was engaged.”

It’s two completely different pictures. In the before data, mycelial saturation and load are concentrated in the spore drive lab where they should be, pulsing in the wave pattern Straal and he discovered way before their research was co-opted by Starfleet. Energy levels are pretty low - as they should be since the time frame doesn’t include a mycelial jump.

After their sojourn to the alternate universe, however, the situation changed dramatically. Now mycelial energy can be found in every part of the ship, but its concentration is disconcertingly low. The wave pattern is almost completely gone, too, a mere blip Paul wouldn’t be able to identify if the display didn’t highlight it for him. And there’s another thing: even though concentration is so low, the load seems to be high. That’s impossible.

“Computer, verify mycelial saturation and load.”

“Data verified.”

But those are dependent variables, Paul thinks. How can there be such a high load without it affecting mycelial saturation?

He tries to form a hypothesis, but he’s stumped. Under his shirt, the interface starts itching, so he rolls up his sleeve to scratch at it.

When he looks up again, Paul notices something about those blips, barely-there echoes of the sweeping wave patterns that should be visible on the display.

“Computer, what’s at the center of the highlighted wave pattern residue?”

“The pattern originates from cargo bay two.”

Looks like he has something to investigate.

He takes off to the cargo area, walking along shadowy corridors, the side panels not nearly bright enough to illuminate the whole space, most of the lights still off because of limited auxiliary power. Cargo bay two is deep inside the bowels of the ship, down several decks from his lab and quarters. Paul’s footsteps resound ominously in the endless tubes, and there’s no crew, no chatter to make him feel less alone. He doesn’t enjoy the unmanned lower decks during the best of times, but today, they’re downright unnerving, stretching out into an impenetrable dark. 

Finally, he reaches the entrance to cargo bay two, and presses the panel to unlock to door. Inside, there is even less light, only containers of varying shapes and sizes stacked into neat piles, towering over him, casting shapeless shadows.

“Computer, where’s the source of the wave pattern?” He wouldn’t admit it, but in this dreary setting, it’s a relief to have a reason to talk to the computer again. Anything to break the absolute quiet surrounding him.

“Approximate source located in pod two-four-fifteen.”

Paul finds row four and walks towards pod fifteen.

It’s maybe two by three meters, occupied by an oblong box with rounded edges about the size of the bed he shares with Hugh. _Shared._ He’s not thinking about that.

What’s in there?

The container might just be big enough for a tardigrade. Paul shakes his head, trying to dismiss the thought. They wouldn’t have caught and confined another of these creatures, not after what happened with Ripper. Especially not in such a cramped space. Then again, he doesn’t know how long it’s been here. If Lorca saw any use in having another Tardigrade on hand, surely he wouldn’t have had any compunction about sealing it into a box. 

It must be in so much pain. Paul has to save it, to free it.

He quickly opens the box to find-

Another metal box, cylindrical this time, with a curved front of non-transparent glass.

A coffin. Big enough to fit a humanoid, definitely not big enough to fit even a desiccated tardigrade.

Belatedly, Paul realizes what a big risk he just took. What if it really had been a tardigrade? He should have considered what happened on the Glenn, what happened to Landry.

Doesn’t matter now. The opaque front of the coffin is a privacy feature, but he has no time for discretion. Whatever’s in there might hold the answers to getting his crew back.

He pushes a button beneath the glass and it turns transparent.

Paul gulps in air. It’s like diving deep into a lake and making it back to the surface a few seconds too late. It’s getting the wind punched out of him in a middle school fight.

It’s Hugh.

Paul’s fingers grab at the glass where Hugh’s face is.

He looks … serene. Paul feels his eyes sting. If his thermodynamic systems theory holds true, he’ll be able to touch Hugh. He doesn’t know if he wants to be right.

Paul pushes the button again and the half-sphere of glass over Hugh’s head slides open.

He hesitates, but then, very carefully, he reaches out his hand. His fingers meet resistance. Paul lets out a breath. Hugh’s skin is cool, too cool against his, but it’s there, it’s real. Despite the unnatural temperature, it feels like Hugh, and the way Paul’s palm curves around Hugh’s jaw calls forth a deluge of memories.

Paul tilts his head and presses his lips together, waves of images and feelings threatening to overwhelm him. His first human touch in this place, and it’s his dead partner. What a sick joke.

No, he reminds himself, this is not the time to break down and mourn. He has to pull himself together, save his crew. It’s what Hugh would do. His hand still cradles Hugh’s face. 

_Think_.

The epicenter of the wave pattern residue is right here, where Hugh’s body is. That’s no coincidence. Paul has to find out why, pinpoint the cause. Hugh’s body might hold the answers to bringing back the crew.

“Looks like I need your help again,” Paul says and strokes his thumb across Hugh’s too-cool skin. “You must be so tired of helping me figure this shit out.”

He feels his mouth twist into a wistful half-smile and he moves his hand away, caressing Hugh’s face as he does. 

Paul pulls at the hem of his uniform jacket to straighten himself. It’s probably not a good sign that he’s talking to the dead body of the man he loves. He can’t bring himself to care. This is Hugh.

And talking, even just muttering to himself, is one of the ways he makes sense of things. Hugh never minded.

“You thought it was charming, right?” He looks at the unnaturally still body in front of him.

Paul remembers one of their early dates, when he held an impromptu symposium on mycelial regeneration. Hugh had teased him about it, but then assured him: “I like it. As long as I don’t try and get between you and your mushrooms,” Hugh had given him that fond, flirty look that always works on Paul, “I’m pretty sure I get to keep you.” The mere memory makes him smile even as his heart aches.

“So, the network.” He forces his mind back on task. Something is going on in there. That’s why the high mycelial load doesn’t lead to the saturation levels it should. The only thing keeping the network alive, so to speak, by sending any kind of wave patterns through it, are these tiny blips emanating from here. From Hugh’s body.

Hugh has been inside the mycelial network longer than anyone else on Discovery. Presumably since Tyler killed him several days ago. Plus, Hugh was already dead when they returned to their own universe, so he wasn’t affected like the rest of the crew. 

That means Hugh is the missing link. A connection between the mycelial plane and this universe. It makes sense, in a weird way. Fungi are the only organism capable of bridging the divide between life and death after all.

And there’s so much energy here, so much life force, if you will. The scans showed Paul that much. It’s like a fully-charged battery without a way to release its stored-up power. And maybe that’s where Hugh comes in. Maybe Hugh is the conduit to get all that energy flowing again, to establish a new connection, to replace the one that seems to have been severed.

Paul’s head swims with hypotheses.

He’s the space mushroom guy. This is his specialty. He can fix this.

All he has to do is get Hugh’s body to his lab and work out how.

Paul activates the transportation buffers on Hugh’s coffin and steers it towards the exit.

They need to be fast, he’s sure of that. Untapped energy doesn’t wait around for someone to find a way and access it. It dissipates, disappears. And Paul has no idea how long this has been going on, how much time they have left.

They enter the corridor and a loud groan vibrates through the ship. Paul doesn’t know where it originates, but it echoes through the long tube in front of him, the sound reverberating against the walls, adding to the eerie atmosphere created by dim display lights and shadows. Paul quickens his step.

After a few moments, a panel beside him gives out with a plop, its screen turning dark. He sucks in a breath and walks even faster. Another plop, and another, and another. One panel after the other turns dark, the emergency floor lights beneath them dying, too. It’s like a chain reaction, but at a preternaturally slow pace. A black snake closing in, smothering all illumination in its path.

Paul starts running.

He reaches the spore lab, but when he tries to get in, there’s a screech and a fizzle, a spark of light like something short-circuited in the door’s wiring.

He pulls Hugh’s coffin inside and the door slams shut, then opens again halfway, only to bang shut again. Open and shut, open and shut. It’s hypnotizing, but he can’t afford the time to look.

He maneuvers Hugh next to an empty workstation and glances up at Tilly, who’s about six meters away. A grid of mycelium containers is sunk into the wall behind her, all but one empty, their supply depleted. The console in front of Tilly cracks and shuts off. She doesn’t move, a statue with empty white eyes.

Paul opens Hugh’s coffin all the way, the casing sliding apart to reveal Hugh’s whole body laid out on a white stretcher, the color almost indistinguishable from his white medical uniform.

Peaceful, that’s what he looks like. As if he didn’t have time to feel pain. And Paul knows that’s true. Knows because of the loops he spent inside Hugh’s mind, reliving the minutes before Hugh died. It might not have been real in the strict sense of the word, but it was _true_ , Paul could feel it. Hugh’s shock and surprise, his last thoughts reaching out to Paul before everything turned dark. Quick and painless, that’s what people hope their death to be, right?

Paul pushes the thoughts away. He hurries to get equipment and an emergency med kit.

A loud noise makes his head snap up. The cylinder closest to Tilly’s head just exploded in its pod. _Keep moving, keep working._

His hands shake as he scans Hugh’s body with the tricorder. His spinal cord is severed and there are no signs of neurological activity. There is, however, residual mycelial energy inside his system, a faint pulse traveling through Hugh’s veins, although his blood stopped pumping days ago.

Another spore container explodes and a lightning bolt skitters across the ground towards the spore chamber. The whole chamber goes dark.

_Yes. Of course. That explains what’s happening._

The residual wave patterns emanating from Hugh, however faint, are connected to the mycelium. When Paul moved Hugh’s body, he started rewiring the circuit. What was in a tenuous balance before is losing stability fast.

This is an opportunity, too. Parts of the lab are still intact, and the process seems to be cumulative, not exponential, if-

The emergency lights in about half the space die simultaneously. It’s disconcertingly dark now, the shapes of Paul’s petrified colleagues barely visible.

He breathes in. 

What he needs is something to jumpstart the circuit. Now. Get it over a certain threshold, so it can sustain itself.

Paul lunges for the pods housing the spores. Most of them have exploded. Please, let the last specimen be intact. Please, let him have this.

He pulls out the container. As he does, its illumination fizzles out and the casing fissures in a thin line.

_No, no, no._

The crack is long and visible, but to his relief, the container doesn’t break.

Paul is careful, even as he hurries to get it to Hugh.

How best to administer the spores?

It comes to him: mycelial affinity. If he injects the spores in smaller doses but at different locations, their natural affinity should draw them to each other, make them travel through Hugh’s veins. The mycelial wave pattern already uses Hugh’s bloodstream to propagate itself. If Paul can use his last spore sample to increase that flow of energy, give it more power, that might be the jumpstart the network needs. Or it might fry Hugh’s body.

With a high-pitched whirr, the last console in the room implodes. The spores and Hugh’s coffin are the only light sources left.

Paul takes the hypospray out of the med kit and loads its vial with the remaining mycelial spores. In the dim of the room, the further loss of light is noticeable as he injects Hugh’s pulse points: left wrist, right wrist, left ankle, right ankle. 

He waits. Nothing happens.

There’s a snap and the coffin’s illumination system gives out.

Complete darkness wraps around him, blinding, disorienting. Is this it?

He fumbles for Hugh’s too-cold hand and holds on.

“I tried, Hugh, I did,” he says quietly, “the best I knew how.”

He squeezes too tight, so tight he can feel the heat of his own grip accumulating between his skin and Hugh’s. How will it end? A bang or a whimper. The only comfort is Hugh’s lifeless hand in his.

No, wait. That warmth, it’s not just Paul. It’s Hugh. 

Hugh is emanating heat. He’s turning into a power source, an accelerating thermodynamic system.

“Come on, spores,” Paul hears himself say, “I know you can do it.” He sounds like Tilly.

His hand slides along Hugh’s arm and even through the fabric of his uniform, there’s warmth there, heat even. Maybe too much.

Hugh’s skin starts glowing in a white-washed mycelial blue. It’s strange and beautiful and bewildering.

Is it working? How? What is it doing?

Brightness explodes, bursting forth from Hugh’s torso, illuminating the lab. It’s like a small-scale big bang, darkness turning into matter and light, into energy.

Paul gets flung across the room, crashing against the workstation in front of the spore chamber. Tilly’s station.

He looks up and finds her holding on to her station, shaking her head with eyes squeezed shut. Then she opens them and they are- blue.

“Oh my! Paul! What happened?” She reaches out to help him get to his feet.

“It’s-” He doesn’t know how to form the words. His eyes are open wide, yet unseeing. “It’s Hugh. He saved us.” 

Paul stumbles back towards the coffin. Everything looks like it’s supposed to. Hugh’s body lying there, peaceful, perfectly still. Even in death, Hugh helped them one last time. 

Paul’s body floods with an absolute sense of loss. An animal noise rips through his throat. 

Without thought, Paul launches himself against Hugh’s chest, pressing his face into the familiar fabric of his uniform, unwilling to let go. Just a minute or two. He deserves that much.

An arm comes up around him, heavy across his back. He knows that touch, knows that weight.

Paul tilts his head towards Hugh’s, afraid his mind might be playing tricks on him.

“Hugh?”

Hugh’s eyes are open, and there’s a faint almost-smile on his face.

“You did it, babe,” he says, voice hoarse.

“I did?” Paul shakes his head, too full with thoughts and feelings. 

When Hugh first found Paul inside the network, didn’t he say there was a way back for all of them, that there was a chance they could bring Hugh home with them? It wasn’t just a metaphor, not just a way to soothe Paul. It was real.

“I did.” Paul’s smile is shaky. “We did.”

He presses his lips to Hugh’s mouth and hugs him, his head finding its familiar place in the crook of Hugh’s neck.

Then he remembers. A severed spinal cord. What if-

He gets up carefully, holding Hugh by the arms as he does.

“Stay still. Don’t move. Don’t speak,” he says. “I’ll comm medical, get you checked out.”

He expects Hugh to protest, but all he hears is a quiet _yes_ before he calls sickbay.

This is it. A second chance. The kind you’re not supposed to get, the kind that only exists in the space of what-if. 

This time, he’ll put Hugh first. This time, Paul will do everything right.

**Author's Note:**

> This wraps up the main story line. I've already written an epilogue, which will go up within a day or two.
> 
> The prompts I used, more or less, were _stranded_ , _night terrors_ , _eyes_ and _exploration_.
> 
> Like all my stories, this is part of the [LLF Comment Project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites:
> 
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